Stop a harmful repeating history. Save the Brooklyns.

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stop the 94 252 expansion

Stop the largest highway-driven land acquisition in a generation.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation is moving forward with destructive plans to expand Highway 252 in Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park, doubling traffic in environmental justice communities and demolishing dozens of homes and businesses. Join the growing public awareness and community opposition—let’s stop uselessly spending taxpayer dollars on highway expansion and save the Brooklyns.

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Tell MnDOT and your elected decision-makers that demolishing homes to increase highway lanes and pollution is unacceptable.

Expansion will leave Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park with divided neighborhoods and cut access to the Mississippi River.

Highway 252 still rife with concern

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Highway expansion degrades contributes to severe health disparities in neighboring communities. MnDOT’s proposed options would demolish dozens of homes and businesses, increase toxic pollution in communities of color, and worsen safety issues.

Environmental Justice Data Portal

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Highways Harm our Health in Numerous Ways

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Transportation is still the leading source of carbon emissions in Minnesota and nationally. MnDOT’s plans ignore years of community concerns and prioritize more car and truck traffic at the expense of the people who live, work, and go to school near the highway.

Why Electric Vehicles Alone Won’t Save Us

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Climate consequences of the 2021 infrastructure law

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MnDOT’s 252/94 project threatens to contaminate drinking water sources 1) for Brooklyn Center near Highway 252, 2) for Minneapolis at the Fridley water intake on the Mississippi River, and 3) from road salt and toxic spills arising from crashes of heavy freight trucks.

The Polluted Life Near the Highway

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  • image of 94 east sign on with chain link fence over highway
  • Brooklyn River Park - Explore Minneapolis Northwest
  • Brooklyn River Park - Explore Minneapolis Northwest

The community opposes highway expansion.

  • “I’ve received hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of emails recently about stopping this conversion to a freeway.  I think MnDOT has done many Community engagement surveys itself and they definitely heard back from community as well as the councils that we wanted more alternatives study besides freeways. It just feels performative”

    April Graves

    Mayor of Brooklyn Center

  • “We called for the return of non-freeway alternatives, but MnDOT ignored this along with hundreds of negative public comments submitted in 2023 and 2024.”

    Nahid Khan

    Brooklyn Center resident for more than 30 years

Highway expansion has been proven ineffective.

Widening highways doesn’t work. The principle of “induced demand” causes traffic to meet the built environment.

74

potentially displaced properties in Brooklyn Center if MnDOT moves forward with highway expansion.

135

potentially displaced properties in Brooklyn Park if MnDOT moves forward with highway expansion.

Billions

of taxpayer dollars going towards an ineffectual highway construction that doesn’t address safety

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Learn more about streets for people.

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Lyndale Avenue South Embraces the Return of Open Streets MPLS™

On Sunday, June 7, residents and neighbors across the Twin Cities gathered on Lyndale Avenue South for Open Streets Lyndale. The twenty-block stretch from 22nd Street to 42nd Street came alive—and not because of car traffic. Attendees engaged with Our Streets’ advocacy efforts and shared what transportation issues affect their communities and envisioned what a transportation system built for everyone would look like.

Tell MnDOT to Stop Repeating Past Harms of Highway Projects

For so long, highway projects like I-94 and Highway 252 have divided neighborhoods, displaced families, increased pollution impacts, and prioritized vehicle speed over community well-being. Across the Twin Cities, residents continue to speak out and organize against this legacy of harm. Communities are demanding something different than the continuation of the status quo.

State Legislators Ask MnDOT to Pause Two Highway Projects

State elected officials representing communities in the Twin Cities joined together to formally ask the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) and Governor Walz to pause the Rethinking I-94 and Trunk Highway 252/I-94 projects in a letter, citing concern around disrupted community engagement due to Operation Metro Surge and “federal directives prohibiting consideration of climate impacts, public health, and equity in transportation decision-making fundamentally conflict with Minnesota law and values.”